Comparison of Lake Optical Water Types Derived from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3

Abstract

Inland waters play a critical role in our drinking water supply. Additionally, they areimportant providers of food and recreation possibilities. Inland waters are known to be opticallycomplex and more diverse than marine or ocean waters. The optical properties of natural waters areinfluenced by three different and independent sources: phytoplankton, suspended matter, andcolored dissolved organic matter. Thus, the remote sensing of these waters is more challenging.Different types of waters need different approaches to obtain correct water quality products;therefore, the first step in remote sensing of lakes should be the classification of the water types. Theclassification of optical water types (OWTs) is based on the differences in the reflectance spectra ofthe lake water. This classification groups lake and coastal waters into five optical classes: Clear,Moderate, Turbid, Very Turbid, and Brown. We studied the OWTs in three different Latvian lakes:Burtnieks, Lubans, and Razna, and in a large Estonian lake, Lake Võrtsjärv. The primary goal of thisstudy was a comparison of two different Copernicus optical instrument data for opticalclassification in lakes: Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) on Sentinel-3 and MultispectralInstrument (MSI) on Sentinel-2. We found that both satellite OWT classifications in lakes werecomparable (R2 = 0.74). We were also able to study the spatial and temporal changes in the OWTs ofthe study lakes during 2017. The comparison between two satellites was carried out to understandif the classification of the OWTs with both satellites is compatible. Our results could give us not onlya better overview of the changes in the lake water by studying the temporal and spatial variabilityof the OWTs, but also possibly better retrieval of Level 2 satellite products when using OWT guidedapproach.